Second Amendment had its roots in slavery

Published: Saturday, January 19, 2013 at 08:00 AM.

By DIANE REEVES

PANAMA CITY Thank you, News Herald, for printing the opinion piece in your Jan. 17 edition entitled “Staunch defender of civil — and gun — rights.” It presented me an excellent opportunity to examine the original intent of the Second Amendment.

According to an article written by Thom Hartmann, “The Second Amendment was ratified to preserve slavery” (tinyurl.com/bhha88c), the original intent of the Second Amendment was to legally institutionalize slavery militia.

Based on the well-documented history of the Second Amendment and the use of “state militias” in Southern states to enforce slavery, it stands to reason that a black man using his gun rights to protect his life, family and property against the Ku Klux Klan would have a different stake in protecting his rights than the white guy ranting ad nauseam about the tyrannical federal government.

The true purpose for the final wording of the Second Amendment “as necessary to the security of a free State” was to protect against federal tyranny that would end slavery in the Southern states. State militias were used to preserve and enforce it. The wording, as it stands today, was also necessary to ensure that Southern states would agree to ratify the Constitution and its first 10 amendments.

Originally, there were state-mandated militias nationwide. In the South these were called “slave patrols,” and were used to suppress slave uprisings, to keep them in chains on the plantation and to round up runaway slaves. Militia laws in the Southern states required most white men between the ages of 18 to 45 to own a gun and be a member of one of these militias.

Southern states’ slave militia remained in place until the end of the Civil War and the passage of the 13th through 16th Amendments, when they converted to vigilante groups, the best known being the Ku Klux Klan. However, the Second Amendment remained intact, though its original purpose became obsolete. During the American Revolution, and before the Constitution was written, these slave patrol militia were kept busy putting down large numbers of slave uprisings.

PANAMA CITY
Thank you, News Herald, for printing the opinion piece in your Jan. 17 edition entitled “Staunch defender of civil — and gun — rights.” It presented me an excellent opportunity to examine the original intent of the Second Amendment.

According to an article written by Thom Hartmann, “The Second Amendment was ratified to preserve slavery” (tinyurl.com/bhha88c), the original intent of the Second Amendment was to legally institutionalize slavery militia.

Based on the well-documented history of the Second Amendment and the use of “state militias” in Southern states to enforce slavery, it stands to reason that a black man using his gun rights to protect his life, family and property against the Ku Klux Klan would have a different stake in protecting his rights than the white guy ranting ad nauseam about the tyrannical federal government.

The true purpose for the final wording of the Second Amendment “as necessary to the security of a free State” was to protect against federal tyranny that would end slavery in the Southern states. State militias were used to preserve and enforce it. The wording, as it stands today, was also necessary to ensure that Southern states would agree to ratify the Constitution and its first 10 amendments.

Originally, there were state-mandated militias nationwide. In the South these were called “slave patrols,” and were used to suppress slave uprisings, to keep them in chains on the plantation and to round up runaway slaves. Militia laws in the Southern states required most white men between the ages of 18 to 45 to own a gun and be a member of one of these militias.

Southern states’ slave militia remained in place until the end of the Civil War and the passage of the 13th through 16th Amendments, when they converted to vigilante groups, the best known being the Ku Klux Klan. However, the Second Amendment remained intact, though its original purpose became obsolete.
During the American Revolution, and before the Constitution was written, these slave patrol militia were kept busy putting down large numbers of slave uprisings.

Dr. Carl T. Bogus, writing in the University of California 1998 Law Review, said by the time the Constitution was ratified hundreds of substantial slave uprisings had occurred across the South. Blacks outnumbered whites in large areas, and the state militia were used to both prevent and put down slave uprisings. Bogus said, “Slavery can only exist in the context of a police state, and the enforcement of the Southern police state was the explicit job of the militia,” as protected by the Second Amendment.

Further exacerbating the issue of slave uprisings was the fact that in the 12 years leading up to the Revolutionary War, British Lord Dunsmore offered freedom to slaves who could escape and join his forces, enticing many Southern slaves to flee northward. Ultimately, numerous freed slaves served in Gen. Washington’s army.

James Monroe, George Mason and Patrick Henry (all slave owners) were concerned that Article I, Section 8 of the newly proposed Constitution, which gave the federal government the power to raise and supervise a militia, would empower these federal militia to turn Southern slave militia into emancipation ones, stripping slave states of the authority to enforce slavery. Henry was worried they would use the Constitution to free Southern slaves, a process then called “Manumission.”

Madison’s first draft of the Second Amendment, as encouraged by Thomas Jefferson, was: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country, but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

To appease the Southern states’ powerful slave-holding politicians, the language was edited and made unambiguous. Madison subsequently changed the word “country” to “state” and rewrote the Second Amendment as thus: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Madison could never have imagined that one day his slave patrol militia amendment would be used to protect the right of gun manufacturing corporations — now declared a person by our Supreme Court — aided and abetted by the NRA, to sell assault weapons used to murder innocent little schoolchildren.